Business English - Leadership

Know about these 8 leadership styles to be prepared for anything

Whether you’re a leader or a team member, leadership affects your working life every day. Studies of leadership have identified many different styles, which can be products of personality but also of cultural context. We’ll take a look at them here. The ways that German managers request, advise and explain can be very different to the ways the same things are done in English-speaking countries. I’ll help you look at what leaders might say in English, so that you’ll be prepared rather than surprised.

Garry Britton

25.10.2022 · 4 Min Lesezeit

Know what styles of leadership mean

So many different styles of leadership have been identified by research and writing on the subject that it would be difficult to include all of them here. There is not even agreement over whether management and leadership are identical concepts, although leadership seems to be the more frequently used term these days. Three principal leadership styles were defined by German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin in the 1930s, and are still widely used today: authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire (from French, pronounced ‘lessay-fair’). Authoritarian leaders take charge of the entire decision-making process. Democratic leaders guide the process and involve others; some decisions can be collective, but the leader makes the final decision. Laissez-faire leaders welcome ideas and decisions from all colleagues, with the leader’s input reduced to the minimum needed. In the US, these styles can be referred to as directive, participative and empowering.

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